The Fall of Never(35)

I should have listened to you a month ago, Josh. I should have gone to see a doctor. But now I’m trapped here and I feel so incredibly unsettled and I don’t know what to do. And I think it might be too late. It’s just something I feel, like feeling the difference between hot and cold. I think it might be too late now, Josh, and I think I’m starting to lose it, starting to slip downhill. Fast.

She hung up the receiver. It was a last-ditch effort to display (if only to herself) some form of semblance, some degree of self-control. She didn’t need Josh, didn’t need anyone. She could deal with this on her own. God knows she’d been on her own before.

There was a small, leather-bound journal resting on the nightstand beside her bed. On the book’s cover was a note: At the request of your father, Miss Kellow—J.K. She shuddered, imagining that creep Kildare moving around inside her room. As if his presence alone was enough to contaminate what purity remained. And what purity had remained, anyway?

She grabbed the book and eased back on the bed, paused, then hopped up and went to her bedroom door. Locked it.

Settled back in bed, she flipped open the diary’s front cover and saw that someone—again, probably Kildare—had placed yellow Post-It notes on many of the pages, half peeking up from the top of the book. She flipped to the first note and scanned the page. It only took her two seconds to locate her name there, halfway down the page and written in the diligent, swooping cursive of a teenage girl. Shocked, she backed up and read the passage in its entirety:



I spoke with Kelly today about keeping the journal and she said it was a good idea. She said I should write everything down in it so I remember and won’t forget the way she forgot. But I still haven’t been able to write anything down, and I don’t think I ever will. I just don’t want to think about it. Kelly said when she was little she was scared a lot and when she got older she had to go away to get better. But she didn’t get better. She said to be careful and watch out for myself. I wish we talked more. I wish she tried to reach me too, but I know she’s moved away and lives a different life now. It’s okay. We all have different lives.



When she’d finished reading the passage, she went back and read it again. And again. And again. Frozen by disbelief, she actually had to touch the print, trace the imprint of the letter with one finger. Doing so didn’t make it any easier to comprehend. The police had been right—there she was, her name right there in the middle of the page…and she flipped to the next Post-It marker and found her name again…and the next marker and again. And all without an ounce of explanation. Was it possible Becky had merely filled some sort of empty void? Had the girl simply created an idealized version of her older sister in her head? Was poor Becky losing her mind, thinking that her—

But something was there, caught in the web of her thoughts. Like someone’s name you just couldn’t remember—something that was there but just out of reach. Like fingers, barely grazing the tips of someone else’s.

What? What the hell is it?

But she couldn’t grasp hold of it, and the next second it was gone.

Another passage: Spoke to Kelly about him today. She didn’t have much to say. She’s a good sister. But she’s so far away and it’s difficult to talk to her.

Who was “him”?

Kelly thought, She’s a good sister.

Sorry, kiddo, I let you down. Really. I’m going to take the fall on this one, just lay it all down on me. I don’t know what the hell happened to you out there in the woods that night, but just go right ahead and put the weight on me, as the song goes. Take a load off, Becky, and put the weight on me.

She wished she could take it back, take it all back. And not just the event that lead up to Becky’s unconscious, bedridden state, but the whole thing, the whole goddamn mess she’d made by running away and never looking back. Never looking back for Becky.

I’m sorry. I can only say that so much.

“Sorry,” she whispered. Her voice cracked, and she found she was very close to tears.



In the darkness of the night, DeVonn Rotley—shivering against the cold—glanced up at the light that was Kelly Kellow’s bedroom window. He stared at the warm, glowing light for just a few moments before turning away and heading down the other side of the house toward the rear. He stopped here before a chain-link fence eight feet high and tipped with barbed wire. Behind the fence, a huddle of squat little doghouses stood in a line, as if at attention. The dogs were not out in the yard, agitated by the cold.

“Milky,” he half-whispered, peering into the darkness on the other side of the fence. He heard Milky or one of the other dogs wheeze from inside one of the doghouses. “Capri,” he called, “Dozer, Grizzle…”

Gordon Kellow owned the dogs, but Rotley trained them, named them. They were his dogs, really. It was his hand they ate out of, his face they lapped with their sloppy, flattened tongues.

There was a hose in the grass, attached to a well pump. He primed the pump and used the hose to refill the dogs’ water dishes. Again, he heard one or two of the dogs stir in the darkness. There were seven of them in all—Dobermans, all as black as the Devil’s *. Milky, Capri, Dozer, Grizzle, Humbert, Fenniwick, and Ophelia-Meringue. The cold air, now coupled with the splash of water spilling into the dogs’ plastic bowls, provoked the need to urinate in him. He finished off filling the bowls, tapped the hose out, and wound it back up against the well pump. Then he moved behind the pump, unzipped his fly, and relieved himself on a wedge of serviceberries.